Word: river
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...surprise that The Netherlands has one of the best records in the world on adaptation. The Dutch have been coping with their low-lying location for nearly 800 years. Dutch law requires that river defenses deliver so-called 1-in-1,250 protection--that is, that they limit the odds of catastrophic system failure and consequent flooding to 1 in 1,250 years. (By comparison, New Orleans' defenses offered 1-in-100-years protection...
...maintain this level in the face of greater anticipated flows down the Rhine River (thanks partly to accelerated snowmelt in the Alps), the Dutch are radically revising traditional flood-management thinking. Instead of trying to contain floods, they will accommodate the extra water flow by allowing predesignated areas to flood. The strategy is called Living with Water. Near Nijmegen, the oldest town in Holland, a sparsely populated strip of land that is home to farms and a nature reserve will be allowed to flood to spare the more heavily populated areas downstream. Birds in the nature preserve can fly away...
...Pearl River Tower, under construction in Guangzhou, China, is aiming for a net energy footprint of zero by relying on such features as on-site wind turbines and recovery and recycling of condensed water. In Paris, a new tower will rely on wind turbines to provide its heating and cooling for the equivalent of five months of the year. And if you're a corporation planning a skyscraper, don't assume you can't afford to go green. The new buildings typically cost about 5% more to construct than conventional ones but quickly exceed that outlay in energy savings...
...surprisingly, some companies talk a green game but don't really play one. Ford Motor Co. made a big show of performing a $2 billion environmental overhaul of its River Rouge factory in Dearborn, Mich., but still turns out SUVs like the elephantine Expedition, which gets a puny 14 m.p.g. in city driving. Toyota, famous for its hybrid Prius, has nonetheless joined the U.S. Big Three in lobbying Washington against stricter fuel standards...
...father's unchallenged power was certainly evident across Egypt on referendum day. After casting a "yes" vote at the Fouad Galal school on the east bank of the Nile River in Cairo, Diab Abolibda, a 59-year-old engineer, described how in the presidential election two years ago he favored upstart candidate Ayman Nour over Mubarak. Asked how he felt now that runner-up Nour was serving a five-year prison term for election fraud, a verdict and sentence criticized by many democracy advocates as political punishment for brashly challenging the president's authority, Abolibda let out a hearty laugh...